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How far can you push the boundaries of a literary character on World Book Day?

Posted on February 18 2015

It’s World Book Day again and you need to send your child off to school in fancy dress. It supposed to be their favourite literary character, so you raid their dressing up box and pull out various superhero or Disney princess outfits you’ve gathered over the years. You question yourself…they were once books/comics right?!

Time is of the essence so you convince yourself this is true and pack your little Cinderella and Superman off to school. The Cinderella story stems from a folk tale, a version of which was included in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, so you can totally get away with this as a literary character. The same goes for a number of the classic Disney princesses. What about Elsa from Frozen though? Well, it can be said that the Frozen story is based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Snow Queen, so at a total push, Elsa is a literary character, but you really are pushing it to the boundaries now!

What about Spiderman, Superman, Batman and the like? If you class comics as literature then sure, superheroes are literary characters. But what about characters like Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story? I’m sorry, but this would be a total cheat on World Book Day! They are most definitely film characters. Sure, you can get books about Toy Story, but literary character? Come off it!

Of course, we understand that sometimes the easy option of what’s already in your child’s dressing up box is the way you need to go when it comes to World Book Day fancy dress costume, or it may be that your child absolutely insists on being dressed as a movie character. But what we love about dressing up, is the imaginative play that it encourages, and World Book Day is the perfect time to encourage this in your child.

On the run up to World Book Day, try and prise your little one away from the DVD player and start reading them a new story with a character you think they’ll connect with. Maybe, just maybe, come March 5th, you won’t have to listen to a rendition of ‘Let it Go’ for the 450th time and your child can leave their Elsa dress at home and try out something new. Let them stand out from the crowd this year!